Roman Triumph: Survival City Builder – Rimska ruševina s potencijalom

• DEVELOPER: Coreffect Interactive
• IZDAVAČ: Forklift Interactive
• PLATFORME: PC
• ŽANR: City-builder
• DATUM IZLASKA: 3. travnja 2025.
• POČETNA CIJENA: 24,99€
• RECENZIRANA VERZIJA: PC

Roman Triumph: Survival City Builder places you at the northern fringes of a procedurally generated Roman Empire, tasked with building a thriving settlement while fending off barbarian hordes and mythological beasts. Developed by Coreffect Interactive, a solo dev effort from Montreal’s Philippe Lefrancois after five years of work, it’s a labor of love inspired by classics like Banished, Caesar III, and Kingdoms and Castles. The goal is to appease gods, and defend against escalating threats, barbarians, Hydras, Minotaurs, and more.

Building an Empire, Brick by Bloody Brick

Roman Triumph follows the classic city-building formula with survival elements. You begin with a few people and basic materials such as wood, stone, and food, and must build a working town. Start with houses, farms, and clay workshops, then add upgrades like aqueducts and proper entertainment. Your people need food, safety, health, and happiness, so you’ll manage resources by hunting deer, growing wheat or cabbages, and raising sheep. As you progress, you can research over 60 buildings and defenses, transforming your small village into a strong fortress.

The game keeps things simple with straightforward mechanics. Need stone? Build a stone quarry. Need iron? Build an iron quarry. You can chop trees and plant new ones too. Other systems are equally simple, decorations boost your citizens’ comfort, happiness, and culture in clear ways. The best part is the gradual progress. Unlike many city-builders that force you to suddenly upgrade everything at once, here you improve through technology. While enemies do get stronger over time, the early game stays manageable as you develop your town at your own pace.

Enemy attacks come in waves. As your town grows, you’ll face mythical creatures like Hydras, Minotaurs, and Dragons that don’t like your expansion. You start with simple wooden fences and upgrade to brick walls, towers, and ballistae which makes the whole defense system more meaningful. Battles happen in real time, but you can pause to give orders, move troops, assign defenders, or fix broken walls. Sometimes the AI has problems: soldiers might get stuck, stop fighting, or chase unimportant targets while your walls are being destroyed.

Gods, Walls, and a Steady Roman Rise

The gods add more to manage. Jupiter, Mars and others want temples and gifts (food, gold). If you please them, they help with better crops or stronger soldiers. If you ignore them, they may send disasters like storms or sickness. You can choose to play without mythical elements if you prefer, but I prefer keeping it realistic and fight human enemies. The game also lets you trade with nearby towns using caravans, and keep your people happy with theaters. But trading is very simple, just set it up once and it works on its own. There’s no deep diplomacy or enemy factions to deal with.

The game uses random maps (forests, hills, etc.) to keep things fresh, though gathering resources can feel repetitive. While the core gameplay such as building, defending, researching works well in Early Access, later stages could use more variety. There’s nothing much beyond building a huge arena, training stronger troops, taxing and improving your citizens’ lives. At least the wall defense system works properly. Managing resources is also a simple thanks to a clear menu system – you don’t need to control each worker. While the game doesn’t take big risks, it works smoothly and is genuinely enjoyable to play.

For an Early Access game, it’s surprisingly well-balanced and stable. However, the graphics could be better. While everything runs fine even on high settings, the visuals lack sharpness and don’t feel as smooth as expected. Some textures, like the citizens, look a bit rough, but these issues don’t really affect gameplay. I really hope the dev adds a proper politics system later, it feels like a missed opportunity since the Romans were famous for their political intrigue.

A highly recommendable Early Access game

The game has some fun mechanics to explore, like managing aqueducts and water, or building a Colosseum. I also like the clothing system, though I hope it gets expanded later. With defenses like ballistas and scorpions, the game isn’t bare-bones, it just needs a bit more content to keep the late-game engaging and balanced.

Roman Triumph: Survival City Builder is a great choice for fans of city-builders who enjoy survival challenges and Roman history. The Early Access version already has solid gameplay, you’ll build, defend, manage gods, and survive. But the game isn’t complete yet. The developer plans to add more technology, enemies, and improvements. What’s here now works well, but needs more depth. If you don’t mind playing an unfinished game, give it a try. Otherwise, you might want to wait for more updates.

Recenzentski primjerak ustupio izdavač

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